Brendan O'Neill is editor of the online magazine spiked and is a columnist for the Big Issue in London and The Australian in, er, Australia. His satire on environmentalism, Can I Recycle My Granny and 39 Other Eco-Dilemmas, is published by Hodder & Stoughton. He doesn't
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The coverage of the Costa Concordia tragedy is being tainted by snobbish aversion to the cruise-liner industry

Has anyone else noted a sneering undertone, even flashes of I-told-you-so glee, in some of the newspaper coverage of the Costa Concordia tragedy? Even before we know the full facts of what happened on that ill-fated cruise-liner, already journalists are queuing up to denounce the gigantic and vulgar folly that is cruise-ship holidaymaking, where dumb people pile on to “skyscrapers on the seas” and quaff booze in “garishly decorated restaurants”, failing to realise that the 120,000-tonne vessels they’re sailing on actually symbolise the “fallibility of modern civilisation”. Some are even talking about Poseidon, as if the god of the sea had perhaps punished these silly seafarers for fancying that they could have booze-fuelled larks on the Mediterranean.

Usually when there is a tourism-related accident, such as a plane crash or deaths on an adventure package holiday, reporters wonder “what went wrong in this instance?” But in response to the sinking of the Costa Concordia, they’re musing upon the decadence and stupidity of the entire cruise-liner industry. They seem particularly perturbed by the size of these ships, with Michael White of the Guardian quipping about how the Concordia is not unlike the Western banking system: “dangerously over-engineered to make someone more money.” Like the banking system, this ship now has a “liquidity crisis” (geddit?!), which just goes to show how stupid it is to try to build a “skyscraper of the seas”. White points out that the Concordia is roughly the same size as a US aircraft carrier, although of course it has “less firepower – except in the drinks department”. Because that’s all people on cruises do, you see: drink. Usually in “garishly decorated restaurants”, the Mirror informs us, “like a scene from a psychedelic Alice in Wonderland”.

What we have here is a mishmash of snobbery and misanthropy. It is the modern, well-educated hacks’ aversion to the cruise-liner industry, to this apparently inferior form of global travel, where holidaymakers spend their days swimming and drinking and watching crap comedy rather than trekking to temples in the snowy mountains of Nepal, which means they can be so cavalier about the Costa Concordia tragedy. And it is their disdain for anything too big and glittery and nature-defying, such as a 120,000-tonne ship that has the temerity to carry thousands of people around the world, which makes them feel strangely elated about the fact that one rock has put a stop to this particular seafaring “folly”. Bemused by the uncultured, sun-lovin’ hordes who pack out cruise ships, and disgusted by the idea of building big, Titanic-style cruisers in the first place, lots of people are looking at the battered Costa Concordia and secretly thinking to themselves: “LOL.”